It was fifty years ago today that Winston Churchill died.
There’s a strong case to be made that Churchill was the greatest person of the past 100 years; that without him, Western Civilization might be a very different thing today.
He was a great political thinker, a great statesman, and – especially in the darkest hours of World War 2 in Europe – one of the most epochal leaders of all time.
And one of the great orators; I’m as unemotional a person as you’ll ever meet, but it’s hard not to feel something stirring at Churchill’s greatest speech, his “Dunkirk” speech:
He rallied a people whose backs were worse than “up against the wall” – and a civilization that’d just taken a massive beating after one of the bleakest quarter-centuries in history.
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I remember visiting my grandfather as Churchill’s funeral was being shown on TV. As a kid, I thought of TV as a vehicle for cartoons and toy commercials. I asked Pawpaw why he’d spend time watching such a boring parade. He replied that this was in honor of one of the greatest men of the last 100 years, and he pointed me to the bookshelf lined with books Churchill had written. I wish those had come to me.